


Silence and I

by grammarpolice



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: (kinda), Blood, Buried Alive, Childhood Memories, Gen, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Malcolm Bright Whump, No Plot/Plotless, Solitary Confinement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-22 15:20:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22118017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grammarpolice/pseuds/grammarpolice
Summary: So I close my eyes,Till I can't see the lightAnd I hide from the soundWe're two of a kind,Silence and I(lyrics and title from The Alan Parsons Project)
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & Martin Whitly
Comments: 12
Kudos: 25





	Silence and I

He didn’t think silence could be so loud. It’s a monstrous thing, the way it bites into his skin like a thousand white-hot pins and needles.

His heart pulsates against the force of his ribcage, against his muscle tissue and against his ears, until his lungs swell with the weight of his blood, and his throat constricts around his tattered airways. He inhales stale, rotting oxygen, then exhales, his breath hot on his cheeks as it ricochets off the glass top of the coffin. It clouds up like a window on a December day, and he raises his palm upward, all battered and bloodied, to wipe it transparent. 

He grimaces as his flesh collides with the cold glass, then sweeps his hand in a sideways motion—left, right; left, right; left, right—until he can see the underbellies of beetles and worms and spiders once again. 

At first, he’d hated the insects. He’d imagined them slithering down his throat, then crawling their way back up, snaking through his ears and into his brain, drinking his blood and eating his organs and his flesh from the inside out. They used to make him scream, push harder against the bottom of the coffin, screw his eyes shut so tight they felt like they were melting from their sockets and leaking down his cheeks. 

Now, he likes the insects. Now, he needs the insects, if only for their company. He watches them scuttle across the glass, watches them burrow into the dirt, watches them quarrel and climb and eat one another leg by leg, pulling tender flesh from body, and it’s the only thing that brings him comfort. 

When he was younger, his father bought him a tarantula. “Now, Malcolm,” he said. “I got this for you, and I want you to take real good care of him. Think you can do that?” 

Malcolm named him Krypton. He was blue, with grey legs that lit up silver beneath the sun, and fangs that glowed red against the boy’s flesh. 

“Your mother isn’t to know,” his father said. 

Malcolm assembled a cage in his room, consisting primarily of cardboard and tape. 

“She doesn’t like spiders.” 

He hid Krypton and the shoebox beneath his bed at night and gave him water in bottle caps and ants dug up from the backyard during the day. 

His father didn’t mention Krypton again, until a muggy July evening. He’d been working in his office most of the day, while Malcolm, Ainsley, and Mother went to the neighborhood pool. 

When Malcolm got home, he went to see his father. He knocked on the office door, then hovered by the entrance, hands tucked into the pockets of his swimming trunks. His father opened the door a moment later, and said, “Ah, Malcolm. You’re back just in time. Can you go get your spider and bring him here for me?” 

Malcolm nodded, ran to his room, and pulled Krypton and the shoebox from under his bed. 

“Good,” his father said once he arrived. “Now, set him down on the desk.” 

He did. 

“All right.” His father emerged behind him, a shadow settling over Malcolm, breath hot on the back of his neck as the man leaned over his shoulder and whispered, “Now I want you to eat him.” 

Malcolm blinked. “What?” 

“Eat him.” 

“Why?” 

“All things die, Malcolm. It’s better to kill them yourself.” 

With his father hunched over him, teeth like jagged fangs contorted into a malice grin, Malcolm stuffed Krypton into his mouth.

He didn’t know that spiders could scream, but for a moment his pet writhed and shrieked against his teeth and gums until he bit down harder and swallowed through the crunch of legs and the metal of blood. 

The vent next to Malcolm’s right abdomen growls. Filtration eats up the taste of dirt, and a steady flow of crisp air glides across his cheek. 

He’s not sure how long he’s been here. If it weren’t for the ventilation system, he would have suffocated hours ago. On average, if buried alive, it takes one about five hours to consume all the air in a coffin. This is the seventh time the filtration has flicked on, meaning he’s been trapped for roughly thirty-five hours.  
John Watkins had buried him with a knife. 

It rests on his chest now, rising and falling with the steady motions of his breath. He shivers, and it slips off his torso and onto the glass with a clatter. 

“Fuck!” he shouts, and it doesn’t matter. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” 

It doesn’t matter, because no one can hear. 

Malcolm’s body feels hot like his skin was peeled back, licked with flames, then plastered back on. Sweat trickles down his face, down his legs and down his chest, and he wants to shout again because he can’t lose any more water. 

His stomach is past the point of growling, and now its acid swallows down his organs to emulate satisfaction. Regardless of the air that filters through the box, he’s finding it harder and harder to breathe through the heaviness of his chest and the shriveling of his lungs. 

He wonders if Gil is looking for him. 

He wonders if this is how the girl in his father’s trunk felt. Was it her body or her mind that shut down first? 

He wonders which will happen to him. 

He figures his mind is already broken, cracked and dented with years of spider legs between teeth and impromptu camping trips of blood beneath fingernails. 

He wonders if he'll die. 

He grunts, pulling his palm from his stomach and maneuvering it to the floor of the coffin. The light next to the vent provides just enough illumination for him to make out the knife's outline. He wraps his fingers around the blade, and it sinks into his flesh like fangs. 

“Fuck!” 

Blood slithers down his palm and wraps around his wrist. The smell is almost suffocating, and he can taste it on his tongue. He shouts, and squeezes the blade tighter, letting it tear into his flesh and bite down against bone. 

After a moment, it doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s numb, and he’s numb, like when his father was taken away. He's numb like an ice bath. He's numb like scarred skin and paralyzed nerves. 

He releases the knife onto his chest. Then he picks it up, black handle sticking against his torn flesh, and holds the blade beneath his chin. 

What if he tilted his head back, then propelled it downward? Would the blade go through the roof of his mouth? Would it stick out of his skull, lodged between two bones, passing through one of his eye sockets? 

The blade pokes into his skin, just beneath his tongue, and a stream of blood oozes down his neck. Above, a spider and a beetle tussle over a worm. They pull it every which way like a game of tug-o-war. Eventually, it tears in half, the juice of its insides splattering, and the spider swallows it whole. 

Malcolm falls asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> i’m actually so embarrassed to post this but i’m going to anyway because it took me like two hours. i honestly have no clue what this writer's block plotless mess is and i'm so sorry. i'm trying to think of an actual good story plot to write so if you have one that would be ammaaziing 
> 
> if somehow someone likes this i can continue 
> 
> this story is based off of csi 5x25 which i highly recommend


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